The fact is that we have too many news channels in our country. And since these childish enterprises have very little to do, they keep running the same news items again and again irrespective of whether the news is real, exaggerated or even manufactured. To make matters worse, they accompany these re-runs with bellicose images. What else can one make of the fact that we are incessantly told that 6,000 Chinese bloggers (a country which has hundreds of millions of bloggers) think that Arunachal belongs to China and while we are being told this we are presented with visual images of stern Red Army soldiers marching in wicked proletarian unison? Even laidback and bored watchers like me can justifiably get paranoid that China is about to invade Nandigram, Gadchiroli and the drains of Noida (parts of our great country cleverly avoided by our own hapless police!).

Let?s try and restore some sanity to the debate. We need a confrontation with China pretty much just as much as we need a swine-flu epidemic. In the sixties, we provoked them (and if you don?t believe that we provoked them, read Neville Maxwell?s book?our great socialist government minions gave him access to the Henderson-Brooks report which we ordinary citizens are yet to see). And in return, they gave us a bloody nose. There were some good fallouts though. The egotistical General Kaul (who in all probability would have tried to engineer a coup d??tat) was sacked as was the incompetent Krishna Menon.

One can argue with equal emphasis that the last thing China needs is a confrontation with us. While they have been quite successful in many ways, they are still a poor country and their primary objective is to increase their national wealth while managing social cohesion?a difficult task at the best of times which is made more difficult during periods of rapid growth accompanied by volatility. Confrontation is not in the interest of either country; but it might be in the interests of bloggers who can draw attention to themselves and of TV channels starved of Bollywood gossip and murder stories.

The Chinese state unlike the Pakistani one is in control of the country and the ruling elite is rational and therefore one can argue would be susceptible to rational arguments and incentives. We must make sure that they in turn feel the same way about us. There are numerous sensible ways in which we can resolve matters. One radical solution is for each country to insist on paper that they are not ?conceding sovereignty over even one square millimetre of land? and then proceed to unilaterally grant the other side a perpetual lease over the lands actually occupied by the other party. This would be a neat trick. No face is lost.

The hyper-nationalists on both sides can feel happy that sovereignty has not been compromised and pretty much nothing need change. Similarly, each country can unilaterally accept as dual citizens of the lessor and the lessee the residents of these thinly inhabited parts. We will still require to have some give and take on the ground as we actually lay down markers on the leased land. But this can be done quietly by soldiers and engineers without involving internet aficionados and TV camera crews.

Having dispensed with the border problem in this manner or in any similar imaginative and intelligent way, perhaps we can turn our attention to the things that matter much more to the citizens of both countries. We can focus on increasing trade between our two high growth economies; we can suspend our restrictions on Chinese workers coming in and working on our infrastructure projects and in return they can ease up on visa requirements for our businesspersons. We can encourage greater cross-border investments. We can consider opening up our showcase infrastructure projects (e.g. metros) to minority investments from Chinese entities. We have been hesitant in this area. There is no need to be. We can and we should boldly welcome Chinese investments in most if not all sectors. They, in turn, could even consider giving our companies preferential investment terms. We can increase greatly the intake of Chinese students into our colleges and in turn get more of our students, teachers and researchers into China?s burgeoning university system.

We can let the Chinese know that while we respect the Dalai Lama because such respect is central to our heritage (Gautama Buddha was probably the greatest historical Indian, was he not?), we really do not support the mischievous machinations of sundry Hollywood celebrities, western governments and the CIA. It is the CIA?s habit to encourage people to revolt (the Hungarians in 1956, the marsh Arabs in the nineties and so on) but never give them enough support to win. They have done the same thing with Tibetans knowing full well that American trade and investment relations with China will always take precedence over the crocodile tears shed for Tibetans or Uighurs. We on the other hand understand that encouraging secessionism elsewhere can backfire on us and in any event have no desire to cynically manipulate a great Buddhist religious figure and his followers. Our respect and affection for them does not translate into political support of any kind.

Both countries should focus on increasing interactions between civic groups?Chambers of Commerce, CEO Forums, Writers Forums, Cinema Chambers?all of these can stay engaged in more meaningful ways. If Bollywood movies can be shot in Malaysia, Switzerland and Australia, I don?t see why we cannot have our traditional hero and heroine traipsing on the Great Wall and lip-synching their way on and on about Dil, Pyaar and Mohabbat as they habitually do with great aplomb and abandon!

We need not succumb to the false argument that if we are not aggressive and hyper-patriotic, we somehow become naive and supine. I believe it is high time we explored rational win-win outcomes and stop allowing the agenda to be set based on hysteria and unsustainable bellicosity.

?editor@expressindia.com